Annihilators #2 Review - The return of Brandy Clark, The Quest for ROM begins and . . . enter the Wraith Queen!

Summary: If you haven't read A#1 or my review of it please do so before reading beyond this point. The Annihilators have a brief confrontation with Dr. Dredd before he makes good his escape. So with Dredd gone for the time being the Annihilators decide to head planet side and deal with by the the emergence of the Black Sun in Galador's solar system. There, they give the shell shocked Galadorians some much needed help by taking the fight to the deathwings. We learn at this point that Brandy Clark is basically the equivalent of Galador's queen. We also learn that her husband is "gone" but were gonna get back to that. Beta Ray Bill with some assistance from Quasar generates a storm specifically "designed" to blunt the rays of the Black Sun. It works which momentarily causes the deathwing threat to abate. It turns out Dredd is also on Galador and he's not happy about what just happened. Not that it matters much cause Ronan in his zeal to proof he can hang with the "alpha plus" power level members of the team basically pimp slaps Dredd despite up until now Dredd almost seemingly to be invincible. Brandy and the Annihilators later confer only to have the ever logical and rational Silver Surfer hypothesis about something that may be too terrifying to contemplate. It appears as if Dredd was not working alone and that it's quite possible his accomplice might have been a very distraught queen who is so desperate to see her husband again that she might cause a crisis of epic proportions in order to usher his return.
But before any body can really respond to that the Wraith Queen crashes their little meeting and proceeds to boast that their efforts to halt the Black Sun's power is "too little too late". The last panel shows mystic energy tendrils shooting forth from the queen dispersing everyone in the room.
REVIEW: This issue was fucken awesome! I gotta hand it to Abnett & Lanning! Ya know I thought I had this story line figured out already before I opened this book but I was wrong. As if bringing Brandy Clark into the story line wasn't cool enough the writing takes us for another tragic yet amazing turn by suggesting her role in Dredd's plan. Which is ironic because that would be the second time Dredd has managed to use Brandy's feelings for ROM to manipulate her. That really sucks but it makes for some great drama that clever plot twists like this produce. In this issue we also get to see the team coalesce into a smoother fighting unit. In fact, they almost seem to be having fun together much like co-workers who get along and love their job. Despite Ikon's antagonistic attitude toward Quasar at the beginning it appears she's starting to warm up to him. So much so that I bet by the end of the mini-series we might be finding them together in bed sharing a cigarette. I've also really been enjoying the dialogue too. Very snappy and filled with a lot of sarcastic humor. And aside from all that there's also Wraith Queen which I don't think we really know much about as of yet. Something else worth mentioning in one panel Beta Ray Bill makes a reference to having fought in the last Wraith War (ROM #65) which I sorta predicted in a previous posting: http://romspaceknightart.blogspot.com/2011/02/speculations-on-annihilators-silver.html
It sounds to me like we might be seeing ROM in the near future. It's strongly implied that ROM is not dead but merely somewhere far away. There's no reason why they can't bring him back in human form and just have people call him by his title both official ( My Lord or Prime Director perhaps?) and unofficial as Brandy would (my love/husband). It could be done and that's what I'm hoping for. It was cool that we got to see other spaceknights up close. It would have been nice to see them in action of course but then again these are not the combat veteran Spaceknights from the first Wraith War that took on Terrax the Tamer when Galactus came to Galador in ROM#26. Now that was one epic fucken battle! http://siskoid.blogspot.com/2008/10/spaceknight-saturdays-as-advertized.html Even Ikon, despite her fighting skills and fierceness doesn't posses the instincts of an experienced warrior. Blindly charging Dredd in the midst of all those mutilated Spaceknights and after the Surfer having just gotten his hand cut by Dredd's invisible "razor edge" shield was not the most tactically sound plan of attack.

Nit Picking: I'd really like to know what sort of cyborgs this latest generation of Spaceknights are. Because in the first issue we see that IKON can remove her helmet so I assumed these new Spaceknights weren't cyborgs but Galadorians in an exoskeleton armor like Iron Man. Aside from the exterior armor is there also some sort of cybernetic implants or perhaps nanites inside their human bodies that help them interface with the armor some how kinda like the Borg? And again, how did Dredd survive from the original series in which he was choked to death by ROM's clone? Also, what do you think would happen if another sun appeared out of nowhere in our solar system? yeah, it would just kinda slightly mess up the delicate balance of orbiting objects with various gravitational fields. It would add bit of realism to the story if that were mentioned as another reason to get rid of the Black Sun asap.
I'm hoping to get some answers to these questions soon. But so far over all especially considering the licensing red tape the ROM name/armor is in this series is coming along nicely. I think it's just gonna keep getting better.